Notice: This plugin has been transferred to ManageWP. I am no longer working on it. Please direct any feedback to the new developer. See the plugin homepage for more information.

Sometimes, links get broken. A page is deleted, a subdirectory forgotten, a site moved to a different domain. Most likely many of your blog posts contain links. It is almost inevitable that over time some of them will lead to a “404 Not Found” error page. Obviously you don’t want your readers to be annoyed by clicking a link that leads nowhere. You can check the links yourself but that might be quite a task if you have a lot of posts. You could use your webserver’s stats but that only works for local links.

So I’ve made a plugin for WordPress that will check your posts (and pages), looking for broken links, and let you know if any are found.

Gives you a list of all links ever posted on your site, with the ability to search and filter it.

Lets you apply custom CSS styles to broken and removed links.

Highly configurable.

The broken links show up in the Tools -> Broken Links tab along. If any invalid URLs are found a notification will also show up on the Dashboard widget. To save screen real-estate, the widget can be configured to stay closed most of the time and automatically expand when broken links are detected.

Download

The current version of this plugin is only compatible with WordPress 3.0 and up. If you have an older version of WP, try one of the older releases. Specifically, version 0.8.1 is the last one that’s still compatible with the WP 2.8 branch, and version 0.4.14 is the last one compatible with WP 2.1 – 2.6.x.

Installation

Install “Broken Link Checker” just like any other WordPress plugin :

Download the .zip file (see below).

Unzip.

Upload the broken-link-checker folder to you /wp-content/plugins directory.

Hi, Great plugin – Thanks! I would like to make a suggestion, would it be possible for the plugin to delete posts where it found inactive links? I’m running RSS feeds and like the fact that the plugin will find posts that are no longer relevant but then I have to manually delete posts like twice a day.

[…] Broken link checker is a great plugin and i have been using this for a while with no problems. Once installed the plugin checks your WordPress site for any links that link to a broken site then notifies you either through the dashboard or if you set up the mail facility then you will get a mail sent to you to let you know which links are broken. There is also no need to go to the page or post, just go to the plugin through settings and edit or remove the offending link. […]

Just a note to let you know that I installed your plugin and it worked really well.

However, there was one interesting problem I came across.

On one of my blog pages I added a text link to another of my pages and when I published it there was a strike through in the text.

The link itself worked fine, but I really couldn’t understand why this happened, so I went onto the forum for my theme (Canvas by Woo Themes) and the moderator asked if I was using the Broken Link Checker plugin as it was a known issue. I disabled the plugin and the strike through on my link disappeared.

Is this a regular problem? If so, do you have plans to resolve it as I really like the plugin.

The plugin adds a strike-through to links that it thinks are broken. You can disable it without deactivating the plugin: go to Settings -> Link Checker and uncheck the “Apply custom formatting to broken links” box.

[…] style site like Wikipedia with WordPress Wiki.Dead links drive users crazy and are bad for SEO. Broken Link Checker helps you track them down – a major time saver if you have a large site. Did this article […]

Search

This site uses cookies to improve your experience, to personalize ads and to analyze traffic. It also shares information about your use of this site with social media, advertising and analytics partners. By using this site, you agree to its use of cookies. AcceptSee Details